General facts about nanotechnology

Nanotechnology includes all processes that tend to manipulate with a matter on an atomic and molecular scale and involves developing materials or devices that possess at least one dimension within 1 to 100 nanometre in size.

Nanotechnology holds a great future promise as it can not only improve vast area of current applications but can also create brand new materials and devices.

Billions of dollars are poured into nanotechnology each year for different researches such as the delivery of drugs into the body, increasing the efficiency of different renewable energy technologies to reduce friction in automobile engines and machines, and improving methods of food packaging.

Nanotechnology as a science has throughout the years developed to several different scientific branches such as nanoelectronics, nanomechanics, nanophotonics and nanoionics.

At the end of 2010 there were more than 1300 manufacturer-identified nanotech products publicly available plenty of which are used for health and fitness. The scientists have estimated that the number of nanotech products could reach 3,500 different products by 2020.

Nanotechnology has stirred many lively debates because some people believe that new developments in nanotechnology could even result in untraceable weapons of mass destruction because nanomaterials have almost unlimited potential.

The environmental effect of nanotechnology is still unknown. Some fear that nanomaterials could cause big damage to our environment because several nanomaterials have showed big levels of toxicity.

Many scientists believe that nanotechnology needs to be very strictly regulated in order to minimize the possible negative impact on human health and environment.